EU Presidency: Economic and Financial Affairs Council

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My right honourable friend the Paymaster-General (Dawn Primarolo) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
	Andy Burnham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Home Office) and I are today meeting with the banking industry to discuss the application of the Government's identity fraud strategy.
	The Home Office is today making a statement about the national strategy for tackling ID fraud. Within this strategy, the Treasury and the FSA are working with the financial services industry to ensure it has in place the most effective systems to fight financial crime. New industry guidance to be published shortly will strengthen the system of ID checks whilst reducing the inconvenience for the consumer.
	HMRC will carry out an assessment of the typical profile of frauds committed against it to assist the banks in identifying suspect payments and accounts, enabling them to make timely suspicious activity reports to the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS). HMRC will contact any firms that have been party to these frauds.
	The Chancellor and the Home Secretary recently asked Sir Stephen Lander, chair-designate of the forthcoming new Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), to undertake a review of the suspicious activity reporting regime. Sir Stephen is to report by the end of March 2006.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Andy Burnham) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
	Further to Baroness Scotland's Statement of Wednesday 18 January, the Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo and I are this afternoon meeting senior figures in law enforcement and the banking sector to discuss action against ID fraud. The significance of ID fraud has been further emphasised by recent attempts by organised criminals to defraud the tax credit system.
	The meeting will discuss further ways of improving joint working on ID fraud, in particular through developing the work of public-private groups like the Home Office-led Identity Fraud Steering Committee (IFSC). Criminals who target the public sector are also likely to target the private sector. The meeting will also be discussing ways of ensuring the maximum appropriate sharing of information to protect public and private sector organisations from ID fraud.
	As Baroness Scotland set out in her Statement, the introduction of a secure national identity scheme/identity cards scheme using biometric information will make a step change in protecting people from identity fraud. As part of the work of the Ministerial Committee on ID cards, HMRC and the Home Office continue to evaluate the role of the national identity register in combating identity fraud.
	At the meeting, the Paymaster General and I will be proposing a four step action programme to be taken forward urgently over the next few months under the Identity Fraud Steering Committee:
	First, Government will explore with CIFAS—the UK's fraud prevention service—the procedures for notifying it of the details of employees whose identities have been compromised as a result of large-scale ID theft. This will help ensure that employees whose records have been stolen will not suffer adverse impact on their credit ratings and protect their identities from further abuse.
	Secondly, the IFSC will take forward urgently plans to encourage credit reference agencies and CIFAS to share information with the public sector, for example by welcoming public sector organisations into the CIFAS membership. It will also work to ensure public sector organisations take full advantage of these new opportunities, for example by becoming full members of the CIFAS network. This will ensure that the details of criminals who defraud, for example, the tax credit system are shared in the same way as those of criminals who attack private sector organisations. This will enable partners in both the public and private sectors to detect and prevent identity related crime.
	Thirdly, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) will carry out a strategic review of all suspicious activity reports relating to tax credit and identity fraud to inform the strategy to tackle this threat.
	Fourthly, HMRC will produce an assessment of the typical profile of frauds committed to assist the banks in identifying suspect payments and accounts, enabling them to make timely suspicious activity reports to NCIS and SOCA.